THIS shocking map reveals the terrifying number of wars currently raging across the globe - and experts say the world is now "more dangerous than ever" before.

A terrifying map has revealed the conflicts making the world the 'most dangerous it has ever been'

From Islamic State (ISIS) in the Middle East to Boko Haram in Africa and the drug cartels in Mexico, the conflicts have claimed more 100,000 lives already this year.

Almost none of the conflicts gripping the globe are between internationally recognised governments - instead they represent the growing threat of insurgency and terrorism from which no nation is truly safe.

In the Middle East and North Africa the petrifying expansion of ISIS has seen Islamist fanatics become embroiled a series of civil wars.

The governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Nigeria are just a few of those who are now battling the terror group in their own countries.

Elsewhere terrifying civil wars are raging across Africa, and even Europe has not found itself immune from the world instability with Russian meddling in Ukraine provoking a bloody conflict on the EU's doorstep.

EXPRESS

A map showing conflicts raging across the world which this year have kille more than 100,000 people

We face more terrorists with more safe havens and more sanctuaries today than we’ve ever faced in the past

Top defence expert Bruce Riedel

Now a former CIA agent and top US defence expert has warned that the rise of heavily armed terrorist groups and their increasing access to advanced weapons and technology means the world is more dangerous than ever before.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the respected Brookings research institute, said: "We face more terrorists with more safe havens and more sanctuaries today than we’ve ever faced in the past.

"At home in the United States we’re probably safer than we were a decade ago but abroad our terrorist enemy is more numerous, more barbaric, more dangerous than ever before."

His dire warning echoes comments made by the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawyers, who said that the world is "much more dangerous" than it has ever been, even at the height of the Cold War.

He said: "It’s a much flatter world, a much more multi-polar world, and there are real dangers associated with that."

Around 100,000 people have been killed fighting in the world's major conflicts in 2015 alone.

More than half of those deaths have occurred in Syria and Iraq, where crisis-stricken governments have been battling the growing threat of Islamist extremism.

AP

The conflicts represent the growing threat of terror from which no nation is truly safe

The global situation is so dire that defence spending has become one of the main issues of political contention around the world.

In Britain, there have been dire warnings that cuts to the army, navy and air force are leaving the UK unable to defend itself in an increasingly volatile world.

At the same time the president of the European Union (EU), Jean-Claude Juncker, has called for Europe to create its own army to curtail the growing threat of Russian expansionism.

Across the Atlantic, the issue of defence has dominated the race for the Republican presidential candidacy, with politicians lining up to attack the downsizing of the US Navy.

In a keynote speech to activists Jeb Bush, brother of former president George, said: "The world is a lot more dangerous today than it was the day Obama got elected president."

Presidential rival Donald Trump made a similar assertion as did Chris Christie, who added: "I don’t believe that I have ever lived in a time in my life when the world was a more dangerous and scary place."

Foreign wars are sparking a security crisis at home for western nations, with Scotland Yard recently revealing that officers have foiled five major terror plots this year alone.

Meanwhile, the number of Britons travelling to Syria to join ISIS has reached epidemic levels, with fears that many may later return home to plot terrorist atrocities on our shores.

In America security services have stopped more than 60 planned Islamist attacks in the last year alone sparked by ISIS' call to western supporters to carry out 'lone wolf' attacks in their homelands.

Wading into the debate John McCain, a veteran of Vietnam who was born before the Second World War, has said that the world is "in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime".

That sentiment was echoed by General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said: "I will personally attest to the fact that the world is more dangerous than it has ever been."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has previously said he has "not experienced a time when we’ve been beset by more crises and threats around the globe".